A drive for $500,000 to construct the Kisch Memorial Laboratories for Industrial and Electrical Engineering at the Haifa Technical Institute in Palestine was launched here last night at a dinner at the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria arranged by the American Society for the Advancement of the Institute. Brigadier Frederick Kisch, engineering chief of the British Eighth Army, was killed by a land mine explosion during the North African campaign.

Major Peter Rainer, staff officer of Kisch, author of “Pipeline to Battle,” who served in the Eighth Army throughout the whole North African campaign, spoke on “Kisch–soldier, Engineer and Friend.” Professor Harold C. Urey, head of the Chemistry department of Columbia University and Nobel Prize winner, was the guest of honor. Messages commending the work of the institute, which has supplied the British forces and war industries with 1,000 engineers and technical and research workers, were received from Governor Dewey and British Ambassador Lord Halifax.